68 BUNDELCUND. 



fallen from the retreating cliff of the Rewah ridge; its thickness is very 

 variable -from two to twelve feet, due to the uneven surface of the sub- 

 jacent rock; pebbles of the laterite iron-ore are common along the 

 bottom of the boulder bed. The top three feet of the hard rock looks 

 more like a reconstruction of materials than a rock in situ, it is an 

 irreo-ular, streaked mass of clay, with occasional strings of broken grit 

 bands ; the crushing action which is so manifest in these upper layers 

 extends itself to those below, contortion and fracture on a small scale 

 are evident throughout, but sensibly diminishing in depth — narrow 

 cracks, generally dying out before the bottom of the pits, but sometimes 

 not reaching the surface, and in both cases now filled with clay, are 

 common; they are often accompanied by slight relative displacement 

 of the layers ; all this is very much what must result from the fall 

 of heavy masses upon such strata, and for an actual cause of this 

 nature we have the undermining of the cliff which must once have 

 stood over every spot of this area." 



There are other similar appearances seen on the sides of these pits 

 but for which one has to imagine additional circumstances : they are 

 V-shaped troughs, in the forming of which denudation has taken part 

 either as cause or effect. I observed one twenty feet deep, from the shale 

 surface, that is, the narrow synclinal bend of the strata under it showed to 

 this depth; to fifteen feet down the shale had been removed and its place 

 filled in by debris and boulder clay, this excavation being four feet wide 

 at top ; at five to eight feet on each side of this the layers of shale had 

 been broken and bent in; this whole appearance might most naturally 

 be attributed to a small contortion of the strata prior to any excavating 

 action, but for the fact that on the opposite side of the pit, only twenty feet 

 off, no sign of it exists ; one has then to suppose a gully to have been 

 formed by water, and the sides to have been crushed in upon it. In this 

 case however, the bend of the layers at bottom would be, more likely, 

 convex than concave. But all this has nothing to say to the diamonds be- 



